Brilliant!!!

The game is close. Every posession counts. The other team has the ball. What's your game plan?

Double-team the ball handler and leave Robert Horry wide open. . . .for a 3 pointer.

Brilliant!!!

Saturday night's loss to the Spurs was a lesson in how bad coaching can doom an otherwise winning team. San Antonio set the pace early. And the pace was painfully slow. The Nuggets have long tried to establish a repuation as a running team. And in the regular season the Nuggets do run. But when the playoffs arrive and coaches get down to the real business of strategy and execution, George Karl seems to go on mental cruise control.

The Nuggets simply do not thrive when they have to run their offense in the half-court. The Nuggets have few set plays, and in the sets they do have three guys usually end up standing around watching Iverson or Carmelo try to break their man down one-on-one. The Nuggets are lousy at ball movement in the half-court. Carmelo has no idea how to pass out of a double team, and none of the shooters know how to find an open spot. Even if JR Smith, Steve Blake, and Linus Kleiza could find an open spot, no one seems to be able to get them the ball. Somebody should get the Nuggets a Robert Horry highlight tape. Horry's a guy who has made a career out of finding an open spot on the perimeter. He always gets open, and his teams win championships. Pretty damn simple.

Yet somehow, in the glamour and magic of the playoffs, George Karl seems to have forgotten that San Antonio repeatedly slams the Nuggets by slowing the game down. Apparently he did absolutely zero preparation for the playoffs. And it's not like this is a new phenomenon, something he couldn't have seen coming. The Spurs have beaten the Nuggets in the playoffs in the past by doing exactly what they did Saturday night. They slowed down the game, they executed on offense, and they played 20 seconds of defense every time Denver had the ball. Yet, coach Karl does absolutely nothing to challenge San Antonio's game plan. His options are pretty simple: force the game to be up-tempo, or coach your team on the fundamentals of a half-court motion offense. He had a whole season to get ready for this point and didn't do squat. If Don Nelson was coaching the Nuggets, we'd win 55 games a year and be lock for the conference finals every postseason. But instead we have George Karl, possibly the worst game coach in the league. The Nuggets will probably get knocked out in the first round. . . again.

Maybe this offseason, Karl can take a coaching class at Red Rocks. Or maybe he can just hang out at the YMCA for some high school summer league games. Who knows? He just might learn something.

Fuck yeah, Allen Iverson is sweet. There are few dudes in the NBA who truly believe in the "put up or shut up" motto. Iverson is not on the list. He fucking wrote the list. Proof: Pick and roll #1 = Iverson runs the pick and takes it to the whole gaining two points. Pick and roll #2 = Iverson runs the pick, gets double-teamed, and passes off to Nene for an open dunk gaining two points. Yeah, we won and Iverson is sweet. Who's on your team, bitches?

And who is faster than Melo? Nobody. I've never seen a player attack the hoop faster than Melo did in Game 1. Nobody can stop that kind of speed. Well, okay, maybe Marion Jones when she was on the juice, but nobody in the NBA will stop Melo if he attacks the basket the same way next game. Bruce Bowen was completely befuddled. Defensive stopper my asshole. Melo abused him like the jerk-off high school star who dunks on the developmentally disabled kids. It was pretty fun to watch.

Honorable mentions:
-Baron Davis will you have my baby? What he did to Dallas was embarassing. Avery Johnson should consider retiring after getting beat so bad. I mean, really, it wasn't LeBron or Kobe or T-Mac. It was Baron Davis. When Avery Johnson was in the league, Baron was a poor man's Avery. And now Baron is sporting a freaky 300 beard and tearing Avery's shit up. Also, I think Don Nelson is in the mafia and perhaps the smartest man in the world who looks like he drank a fifth of tanqueray before the game.
-Beware! Every team in the West has got to be worried about McGrady and the Rockets. Granted, it was the Jazz, but the Rockets owned them on all levels and T-Mac was so good he owned the popcorn guy's jock strap. Watch out fools, the Rockets will sweep the Jazz.

Best damn game of the year. Period.

The Nuggets played up to their potential in every way. Nene? Absolutely worth $60 million. Say what you will, but Nene won yesterday's game on both sides of the court. Iverson? Not only did he get his 31 points in the game, but he made it possible for Melo to get 30 points of his own.

The only thing I'm worried about is that Karl didn't really go to the bench much. The starters seemed like they were on the court nearly the entire game. Playing his starters so long might not matter much in the first round. 2-3 days between games means that the guys will have ample opportunity to rest. Hell, LeBron will have enough time for his ankle-sprain to settle down. But - just a tiny little insignificant "but" that I think it's important to mention - what if the Nuggets make it past the first round? Karl has got to make sure his team stays on full for as long they can. But still....

Best damn game of the year. Period.

Wanted: Killer Instinct

Cynics make slow, uneasy converts. My natural tendency is to look at the Nuggets' recent spate of wins as lucky bufoonery. They regularly blow big leads, their coach has been justifiably MIA, and the team doesn't seem to get it.

Because of these characteristics, I view myself as a cynical observer of a team that has the potential to do great things. But I desparately want to be that die-hard fan, the one who believes the Nuggets are the greatest team in the universe. I want to convert to unabashed faith and enthusiasm. But darn it, the Nuggets just haven't earned my conversion. Not even with their recent win over the hapless Kings.

The fan in me is happy with a scrappy win against a mediocre team like Sacramento. The cynic in me thinks it's a bunch of bullshit. The cynic in me wants to see the Nuggets play 48 full minutes of basketball. I would love it if once, just once, Marcus Camby played hard every time he's on the court. I would love it if the coaching staff came out of a timeout with a decent play drawn up. I would love it if the Nuggets jumped out to a big lead and kept it a big lead. Without these essentials in place, it's difficult to see the Nuggets succeeding in the playoffs.

Successful teams master the essentials. San Antonio, Dallas, and Phoenix do not have more basketball talent than the Nuggets. Certainly they are good teams, but none of those teams have a player who exceeds the talent of Melo, A.I., or Camby. The only difference is that the top-tier teams have players who have mastered the fundamentals at both ends of the court. Phoenix wins 20 more games than the Nuggets do each year because they execute better in those 20 games. If Denver ever figures it out, I predict that they will be a 50-55+ win team. And until they figure it out, they will continue to give up huge leads against crappy teams and lose to teams who never waiver in the course of a game.